Email provider prevention/deterrence of unsolicited messages

Abstract

An email sending service embeds identifying information within emails sent on behalf of its service consumers. A recipient notifies their email provider that an email received from the service is a spam email (e.g., an unsolicited message). The email provider forwards a complaint, including a copy of the email, to the email sending service. The service utilizes the information embedded in the email to identify the responsible service consumer. The email sending service then takes corrective action as necessary to prevent or deter the identified service consumer from sending subsequent spam emails.

Description

BACKGROUND[0001]Certain entities, including both businesses and consumers, sometimes have a need to send bulk email. Bulk email is email that is sent to a large number of recipients. The number of recipients can run into the hundreds, the thousands, or even more. For example, an organization may need to send email to its employees. Or, a company may need to send email containing information about new products or discounts to consumers who have indicated that they want to receive such information. Or, a university may need to send email to all or some of its students. These are just examples of scenarios in which bulk email might be desirable.[0002]Sending bulk email can be a relatively simple undertaking. This is especially true when the same email content is to be sent to all recipients. The email protocol SMTP used for sending email over the Internet supports specifying multiple recipients for a single message.[0003]However, sometimes it is desirable for email content to vary at l...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0011]Systems and methods are provided to enable an email sending service to prevent and/or deter its service consumers from utilizing the service to send unsolicited messages. In one embodiment, the service embeds identifying information within emails sent on behalf of its service consumers. A recipient notifies their email provider that an email received from the service is a spam email (e.g., an unsolicited message). The email provider forwards a complaint, including a copy of the email, to the email sending service. The service utilizes the information embedded in the email to identify the responsible service consumer.

Problems solved by technology

One problem faced by bulk email sending services is the exploitation of their services by customers to send unsolicited messages, sometimes referred to in the art as “spam email” or just “spam.” A bulk email sending service is lured into sending spam when it sends email, on behalf of its customer, to a recipient that did not choose to receive the message.

Unfortunately, however, these terms are sometimes abused and it is difficult (e.g., expensive) for a sending service to track such abuse and / or to legally pursue the perpetrators.

Thus, an over-inclusive response to spam by an Internet service provider can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the email sending service for all of its customers, including well-meaning customers that do not send spam.

In other words, legitimate (non-spam) emails sent out using the bulk email sending service can get automatically deleted or mishandled because of prior spam emails sent out by other customers of the service.

Even if a few customers of the bulk email sending service send out spam email to several recipients, this can affect the quality of service for all customers of the service.

Unfortunately, few recipients of spam actually do click on the unsubscribe link.

This may be because some spam email senders abuse the unsubscribe link mechanism.

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